FATHER’S AGONY ‘I killed my drug-addict son’
● As darkness fell on Tuesday, a group of Capetonians held a vigil for a family who had lost their son. But their prayers were for the young man’s father, who is accused of killing him.
“They told me Clinton was dead. I didn’t mean to. I was very scared. I loved my child. It could have been me. It really could have been me,” Sedick Abrahams of Mitchells Plain told the Sunday Times.
The 62-year-old spoke of 13 years of torture at the hands of his tik-addict son — who stole almost everything the family had to feed his habit — and of the different kind of hell his family are in now as he faces a murder charge.
The events that led to Clinton’s death a month ago were difficult for the Abrahams family to articulate at their Tafelsig home.
They said Clinton, 28, stole everything they had — used soap, coffee mugs, kettles, meat from the fridge. He mentally and physically abused everyone, including his siblings Quinton and Jessica.
“I would even have to take the kettle to bed with me at night,” said his mother, Myrtle, looking at her belongings in the lounge, including a shelf now overflowing with new coffee mugs and glasses still bearing price tags. “I could never do this before — display my things. Not for 13 years.”
Abrahams spoke with trepidation; his eyes were bloodshot and he often looked to his family.
“It is very difficult to even mention his name. I love him. I was proud of him. I raised him in the church, he loved playing soccer and rugby,” he said, pointing at a soccer medal dangling from a photograph of Clinton as a child.
Clinton would share everything with his father as a boy — even a tiny packet of chips. In return, said Abrahams, he always shared his food with Clinton when the young man woke in the afternoon after a night of bingeing on tik.
On January 31, Clinton woke up and demanded something to eat. He became aggressive and Abrahams said he feared he would be attacked again. He had barely recovered from being beaten with a glass bottle by his son.
“He came at me wildly. I was really scared and I am not ashamed to say I was afraid of my own child. I was scared. At that moment I don’t know what went through my head. I wasn’t in my right mind. There was a kitchen knife on the table,” said Abrahams.
“The food was there. I told him. It was my food but I said he could have it. I gave him food because I wanted to prevent problems in the house. I was so scared. He said he was going to hurt me.”
“My father was alone,” Quinton, Abrahams’s youngest son, interjected.
The 30 people who arrived to support Abrahams on Tuesday were watched silently by the young, zombie-like tik addicts who lined the street.
Community activist Joanie Fredericks watched Abrahams as he stared into the distance in silence.
Without a lawyer, he does not know what is going to happen on April 11 when he is set to appear in court again.
“This man has not accepted that his son is gone. He does not belong in a jail,” said Fredericks.